Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming cardiovascular medicine, offering breakthroughs in diagnosis, treatment personalization, and research acceleration. However, its responsible integration requires guiding principles: focusing on clinical problems over technology, rigorous evaluation, bias mitigation, thoughtful implementation, and building trust. If applied wisely, AI can become a powerful partner in advancing equitable and effective cardiovascular care.

In June 2025, the White House introduced "Gold Standard Science" principles to enhance the rigor, transparency, and trustworthiness of federally funded research—values long embraced by top journals like JACC. These include reproducibility, openness to null results, interdisciplinary collaboration, and unbiased peer review, all of which align with JACC's ongoing commitment to scientific integrity. The journal is advancing efforts to improve transparency, peer review, and reproducibility through clearer data policies, stronger editorial oversight, and new tools like AI to support integrity and efficiency. Ultimately, JACC views these principles not as a shift, but as a reaffirmation of its mission to uphold scientific excellence while remaining independent, accountable, and open to challenge and debate.

This week's Editor’s Page outlines JACC’s expectations for AI research manuscripts in cardiovascular care, emphasizing the need for clinical relevance, real-world feasibility, and responsible evaluation beyond retrospective model performance. We present a framework focusing on three core domains: addressing a genuine clinical need, using fit-for-purpose evaluation methods across different development stages, and ensuring transparency, interpretability, and reproducibility. JACC prioritizes submissions that demonstrate real-world impact, responsible innovation, and a clear path to improving patient care—especially those that go beyond early model development.